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Paint Me a Road Out of Here

Director

Catherine Gund

Executive Producers

Yara Shahidi, Keri Shahidi, Mickalene Thomas, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, Susan Sawyers, Julie Mehretu, Melony and Adam Lewis, Agnes Gund, Geralyn Dreyfous, Barbara and Eric Dobkin, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter

Producer

Tanya Selvaratnam

Editor

Arielle Amsalem

Cinematographers

Jia Li, Junting Zhou, Emerson Mahoney

In 1971, underestimated artist Faith Ringgold made a monumental painting for the women incarcerated at Rikers Island jail called “For the Women’s House.” Fifty years later, artist Mary Baxter, who at the age of twenty-five gave birth in prison, finds herself banding together with an eccentric bunch of activists, politicians, artists, corrections officers, and Faith Ringgold to free the painting with the ultimate goal of freeing the women. Paint Me a Road Out of Here is a wild tale of the painting’s whitewashed journey and the two artists who challenge the same powerful, oppressive, and persistent institutions, a half-century apart with their artwork, their voices, and their shared persistent goals.

Post-screening discussion with filmmaker Catherine Gund, film participant and executive producer Mary Elizabeth Baxter, Director of Community Liaisons, Women’s Community Justice Association Leah Faria, moderated by Karen Attiah, Opinions Columnist, The Washington Post.

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Catherine Gund

Co-director, And Again I Dream

Catherine Gund, founder and director of Aubin Pictures, is an Emmy-nominated and Academy-shortlisted producer, director, writer, and activist. Her work focuses on strategic, sustainable social transformation, arts and culture, HIV/AIDS, and racial, reproductive, and environmental justice. Her films, which have screened internationally and on PBS, HBO, Paramount+, the Discovery Channel, SundanceTV, Free Speech TV, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video, include PAINT ME A ROAD OUT OF HERE, MEANWHILE, ANGOLA DO YOU HEAR US? VOICES FROM A PLANTATION PRISON, PRIMERA, AGGIE, CHAVELA, and BORN TO FLY.

She has served on numerous arts, media, and justice nonprofit boards and has been a creative advisor on many documentary films. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and an alumna of Brown University and the Whitney Independent Study Program. She lives in New York City with her four children.